d-m-c at worldnet.att.net wrote:
> Capitalism today needs the postmodern family: the end of het, nuclear
> monogamy and the proliferation of varieties of families within the context
> of political contestation over "the" family. Families that create new
> ways of living together--counter to the het monogamous couple--in order to
> sustain the vagaries of capitalism.<SNIP>So, again, it's just not clear to me
> how "free love" in and of itself is any sort of threat to capitalism.
Kelley, I think you could make your point even stronger. Capitalism probably does not *need* any particular set of personal relations, but is quite capable of absorbing to its purposes any such relations that might pop up. I think those who argue that any given set of cultural/personal/etc. institutions are essential to capitalism or even *needed* by it fail to absorb the point that there is only *one* cultural artifact (or whatever one should call it) that capitalism needs,
the one we have been discussing on another thread: individualism.
And the whole point of an individualist social order is that (except for the social relations that generate that individualism), anything can and probably will go.
Attempts to specify some rigid relationship between "base" and "superstructure"
under capitalism (as well as denials of a pretty determining relationship) simply do not realize how infinitely varying but yet unchanging a "superstructure" individualism guarantees. While I don't see any way capitalism could get from here to there, I have no doubt that capitalism could very well survive either gender equality or female supremacy. Homosexuality could even in principle become the basic family structure, with all births by artificial insemination. People simply can't realize how damn flexible the fucking dynamic of capitalism is. (Pun intended)
Carrol